Carole Schemmerling arrives at the Urban Creeks Council office breathless and disheveled
after a morning spent baby-sitting her ten-month old granddaughter, mediating a neighborhood
tree dispute, and rescuing some trampled ferns on Blackberry Creek. She frowns at
the pile of telephone messages awaiting her from friends of creeks groups, teachers,
students of all ages and local politicians -- all seeking advice. But Schemmerling
can’t say no when it comes to creeks.

Schemmerling has served as Bay Area coordinator of the Urban Creeks Council for the
past three years and as council president for twelve years before that. She was also
a member of Berkeley’s Parks Commission for over a decade. When Schemmerling first
suggested to the Parks Commission that they dig up long-buried creeks and bring them
back above ground “They just stared at me blankly,” she says. But she and other creek
advocates, including landscape architect Doug Wolfe, persevered and in 1985 they
helped resurface an underground stretch of Strawberry Creek in the Berkeley flatlands
and convert an adjacent former blighted railroad right-of-way into a charming neighborhood
park named after the creek.

How does one become obsessed with creeks? “I grew up in the slums of Philadelphia,”
explains Schemmerling. “But my grandfather would take us to this beautiful clear
stream, Wissahicken Creek, a tributary of the Schuykill River. The creek was an oasis
to me, a haven,” she says. Later, Schemmerling saw Appalachian streams bright orange
with runoff from steel mills, and when her family moved to Cleveland near the Cuayahoga
River (“you know, the one that caught on fire”), she realized not everyone shared
her values about creeks.

When she moved to the Bay Area, Schemmerling became fascinated by the snippets of
streams that still flowed openly throughout the East Bay. “I wanted to get them out
of those pipes, Schemmerling went on to champion the opening up of a stretch of Codornieces
Creek. And later when the park at Thousand Oaks School needed renovation, she convinced
the city to dig up the section of Blackberry Creek below.

During the “down time” between creek uncoverings, Schemmerling was busy behind the
scenes. “She had this impatience to do something,” says Ecocity creator Richard Register.
“she thought that if we couldn’t uncover creeks, we could at least call attention
to them.” Schemmerling’s suggestion of painting blue creek “stripes” across streets
beneath which creeks were buried evolved into the salamanders, snakes and other “creek
critters” Register designed as stencils for Berkeley storm drains.

Which Berkeley creeks does Schemmerling hope to uncover next? The ultimate “urban”
creeks: a branch of Derby Creek that flows beneath People’s Park, and the section
of Strawberry Creek that flows beneath People’s park, and the section of Strawberry
Creek that flows between the UC campus and downtown Berkeley.

If anyone can unearth these two creek stretches, it will be Carole Schemmerling,
says Ann Riley of the Waterways Restoration Institute -- Schemmerling’s long-time
friend. “Carole has this knack for pulling in different kinds of people, neighborhoods,
and community groups and organizing them around creeks to better their neighborhoods,”
says Riley. When tempers in El Cerrito flared last summer over a creek restoration
that city had undertaken, the diplomatic Schemmerling allayed the fears of angry
residents by showing them slides of other restoration projects and talking to them
about what the creek would eventually look like.

Beneath Schemmerling’s easy-going exterior lies the passion of a true conservationist.
“There are places I’ll never see, places I’ll never go to,” says Schemmerling. “But
I want to know that they’re there.” Meanwhile, she focuses on doing what she can,
here and now. “I have no illusion we can return things to the way they once were,”
she explains. “But to me anything that begins to resemble the way things were naturally
is so much more interesting.” Recently, a fellow creek-restorationist told Schemmerling
he’d seen a 16-inch steelhead in the lower reaches of Codornices Creek. Although
fish haven’t migrated all the way up Codornices for years, just knowing they’re testing
the waters is enough for Schemmerling for now. “That please me no end,” she sighs.